What is actually different about marketing in Saint John
Saint John is an industrial port city, and its economy is concentrated in a small number of very large employers in energy and refining, shipbuilding and port logistics, health care, information technology and professional services. If your business grows by winning work from one of them, then your growth depends on procurement processes, relationships and qualification standards, and there is no advertising budget that changes any of that. I would rather tell you on a free call that search is the wrong instrument for your problem than take $1,500 a month to run a campaign at a buyer who will never click an ad.
What search does buy you, even in that situation, is the check that happens alongside the relationship. Somebody on the other side will look you up. What they find when they do affects whether you get shortlisted, and that is an SEO and AI visibility problem rather than a paid one. It is cheaper than an ad budget and it works on exactly the buyer an ad cannot reach.
The other half of the city is more conventional and often overlooked. There is a real local market of homeowners, small businesses and professionals in and around Saint John, and search works there the way it works anywhere. It is a market growing at 3.5%, slower than the national 5.2%, which means the customers are largely already someone's and growth means taking share rather than catching arrivals.
Three ways to grow a Saint John business, run by one accountable person
Same three services everywhere I work. What changes in Saint John is that the first honest question is whether your buyer is reachable by search at all.
Google Ads Management
Worth it for the local market and for anything with urgency, and usually not worth it if your revenue comes from a handful of industrial contracts. Where it fits: account structure, targeting that matches how far you will actually travel, then cutting spend on searches that were never going to convert.
$1,500/month + ad spend
SEO Consulting
The one that works on both halves of this city. Locally it wins you a market where competition is thin. On the industrial side it is what a procurement team finds when they look you up, which is the part of the sale nobody controls but everybody is judged on.
$1,200/month
AIO Consulting
Being the business ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews name when someone asks for a supplier in Saint John or in your specialty. Increasingly that is where a first shortlist comes from, including inside companies that would never click an ad. Cheapest of the three and one-time.
$1,800 one-time
Where in Saint John I work
Across Saint John
I take on clients throughout uptown Saint John, the North End, the West Side, Millidgeville, East Saint John and Rothesay and Quispamsis. Everything is run remotely over video and email, so where you are makes no difference to the work or the price.
- uptown Saint John
- the North End
- the West Side
- Millidgeville
- East Saint John
- Rothesay and Quispamsis
And across southern New Brunswick
The Kennebecasis Valley and the towns west along the coast are part of the same working market for most businesses here. I work with businesses in Rothesay, Quispamsis, Hampton, St. Stephen, Sussex and St. Andrews on the same terms.
- Rothesay
- Quispamsis
- Hampton
- St. Stephen
- Sussex
- St. Andrews
Questions Saint John businesses ask
Do you have an office in Saint John?
No. I am based in Toronto and work from home, so there is no Saint John office and I am not going to imply there is. Everything is run remotely over video and email, which is how I run every account. If you want someone who will walk into your shop, I am the wrong hire and I will say so on the call rather than after you have paid.
We sell to the refinery and the shipyard. Can you help?
Not with advertising, and I will not pretend otherwise. Industrial procurement runs on qualification, relationships and tendering, and no campaign gets you into that process. What I can help with is making sure that when someone does look you up during it, you look like a serious operator rather than a company with a neglected website. That is real value, and it is a lot cheaper than an ad budget.
Is the local market big enough to bother with?
For most local services, yes. The competition is thin and the cost per click is low, so a modest budget goes further here than it would almost anywhere in Ontario. The ceiling arrives sooner than in a bigger city, and I will tell you when you have reached it rather than pushing for more spend.
Should we also target Moncton?
If you can serve it, it is worth its own campaign rather than an extension of this one, because it is a genuinely different market with a language dimension Saint John does not have to the same degree. There is a separate Moncton page that goes into that.
What does this cost?
Google Ads management is $1,500 a month plus your ad spend. SEO consulting is $1,200 a month. AIO consulting is $1,800 one time. No setup fees and no long contract.
Tell me where you are stuck in Saint John
Twenty minutes, free, no pitch. Describe the business and I will tell you what I would do first, including when the honest answer is that search is not your problem.
Book 20 free minutes